SOURCE: Danaher, David S. “Tolstoy's Use of Light and Dark Imagery in The Death of Ivan Il'ič.” Slavic and East European Journal 39, no. 2 (summer 1995): 227-40.

In the following essay, Danaher asserts that Tolstoy's utilization of light and dark imagery in The Death of Ivan Ilyich: “serve a narrative function in the text, entering systematically into an extended, figurative motif which comes to reflect the text considered as a whole.”

In a recent study of the aesthetics of Tolstoy, Rimvydas Šilbajoris asserts that an examination of the use of detail in Tolstoy is central to an understanding of his art, writing. “The secret of his power as a writer often resides in his ability to use an artistic language in which each single semiotic sign reveals itself upon observation as a microcosm of the whole text” (Šilbajoris, 109). As Edward Wasiolek has pointed out, the significance of detail increases in...